001    /**
002     * Copyright 2005-2013 The Kuali Foundation
003     *
004     * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005     * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006     * You may obtain a copy of the License at
007     *
008     * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php
009     *
010     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011     * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012     * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013     * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014     * limitations under the License.
015     */
016    package org.kuali.rice.ksb.api.registry;
017    
018    import org.kuali.rice.core.api.mo.common.Versioned;
019    import org.kuali.rice.ksb.api.bus.ServiceConfiguration;
020    
021    /**
022     * A service descriptor includes a serialized XML representation of the
023     * {@link ServiceConfiguration} for the service.
024     * 
025     * <p>It's expected that a client of this service which needs this information
026     * will materialize this value when it's needed to obtain additional
027     * information about the configuration information for the service.  The
028     * process for materializing the information can be dependent upon the
029     * type of the {@link ServiceInfo} which contains this descriptor. 
030     * 
031     * <p>The separation of this descriptor information from the main
032     * {@link ServiceInfo} allows for clients of the registry to only load the
033     * basic information about the services in the registry, and then pull in the
034     * full descriptor for the services they actually need to invoke and work with. 
035     *
036     * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
037     *
038     */
039    public interface ServiceDescriptorContract extends Versioned {
040    
041            /**
042             * Returns the id of this service descriptor.  This value should be unique
043             * across service descriptors.  This value is generated when the service
044             * is published to the registry, so this value can be null if the service
045             * has not yet been published to the registry.
046             * 
047             * @return the id of this service descriptor, or null if the service and
048             * it's descriptor has not yet been published to the registry
049             */
050            String getId();
051            
052            /**
053             * Returns an XML value which can be used to materialize the {@link ServiceConfiguration}
054             * for the service.
055             * 
056             * @return the XML representation of the {@link ServiceConfiguration} for the service,
057             * should never return a null or blank value
058             */
059            String getDescriptor();
060            
061    }